Nicolás Maduro’s penchant for public dancing was a factor in the Trump administration’s decision to extract the Venezuelan president in a daring regime-change raid, the New York Times reported Sunday.
Maduro’s lighthearted appearances on state television in recent weeks, including one in which he bounced to an electronic beat while a recorded voice repeated in English, “No crazy war,” convinced some in Trump’s administration that the Venezuelan leader was mocking U.S. threats and calling what he believed to be a bluff, the Times wrote in a quadruple-bylined story.
“It was one dance move too many,” read the lead of the story, which cited two people familiar with the confidential discussions.
Maduro rejected a U.S. ultimatum in late December to step down and accept exile in Turkey, according to U.S. and Venezuelan officials involved in back-channel talks cited by the Times. Days later, after the United States carried out a strike on a Venezuelan dock it said was used for drug trafficking, Maduro appeared onstage again, dancing and brushing off the escalation.
The performances were read inside the administration as deliberate provocation, the two sources told the paper. On Saturday, the Trump administration followed through on its warnings when an elite U.S. military unit carried out a pre-dawn raid in Caracas, seizing Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and transporting them to New York to face drug trafficking charges.
Trump said Saturday that the United States intended to “run” Venezuela for an unspecified period to reclaim American oil interests — a sweeping assertion of power that drew criticism from analysts and foreign governments, but was praised in part by some Democratic leaders.
